Ummm, this thread is about entering China, not about America. Can we stay on topic please?

Also China has a CDC, which is different than the American CDC. So if you are going to write CDC please specify which one. Thanks

I’m wondering if there is going to be a time in the near future where the whole situation is reversed. Where the flights into China are almost empty and selling for cheap and the flights leaving China are full and going for $8000 a pop in economy?

At least leaving Shanghai I can see this happening soon.

Well logically let's look at people who want to enter and leave China. Right now the prices are high going into China not necessarily because there is a high supply of people wanting to enter, but because the flight routes in are severely constrained.

People who want to enter China:

• People with direct relatives in China. A lot of people haven't bothered to visit because they can't deal with quarantine requirements.
• Chinese citizens overseas. Same as above.
• Business travelers. I think this population will be decreased compared to pre covid as businesses want to save on cost, but still large.
• Students. I think a lot of students have given up already or anyone who wants to study in China will have serious second thoughts given that students can't get back in right now.
• Tourists who aren't part of the above groups. I think this population, while not very large to begin with, is decreasing due to lessened popularity of China on the world stage.

People who want to leave China:

• Chinese citizens who want to go on vacation overseas. This is a very sizeable number of people which will become large as soon as border restrictions are dropped.
• Expats. This isn't that big of a population.

If the current border restrictions remain, the populations going in and out won't change much (since Chinese citizens can't get passports) so flight prices will remain the same.
If they drop all the border restrictions (and airlines increase capacity as necessary), there will be a large influx of people who want to get into China ASAP for at least the first few months. After that I imagine it will level off. There will also be a lot of people who want to leave. So overall I'd guess that flight prices in will decrease to somewhat normal levels (likely still more than the cheap prices we saw pre covid as they know customers will pay) and also the flight prices out of China will be elevated, but not overly expensive.

got it. CDC is a failure because they are suspending testing requirements for a population that is already over tested, and the CDC should continue to demand testing of the over tested population because you can test negative and still be infected.

Seriously...makes perfect sense.

I just booked an award ticket on United, WAS-EWR-PVG-SIN-CNS (Cairns), for December because it was by far the cheapest way to get to Australia in business. (Yes, it is a ridiculous routing.) My strong hope is that a non-Chinese routing comes up (partly general aversion to being within Chinese jurisdiction). If not, I'm hoping that Chinese health restrictions loosen by December. But, given the CCP's handling of Shanghai, I put my chances of taking that routing at about 10% (and, as I get closer, probably 5%), to the point that I'm really hoping that, if all else fails, I miss my very tight connection in EWR and get re-routed via HND to SIN (or, better yet, just sent to SYD. I'll eat the cost of a new ticket to Cairns).

As for the various comments here about how bad America's government is: I will merely point out that Americans are entirely within their right to mitigate their risk, that the vast majority of recent covid-19 deaths have been among those who choose not to get vaccinated despite being physically fit to do so (and, I suspect, also forgo various other reasonable precautions), and that it is within the control of most Americans to mitigate their risk to a degree that the chance of dying from the disease is reducible to almost negligible levels, even for older Americans. So the "who cares about starving in Shanghai when everywhere else is a warzone" narrative is false. I will abstain from deriding the idea of relying on Chinese state mortality data, or the odd notion that most Americans considered our immediate past president the best president ever.

I give your itinerary a 5% chance of happening in December 2023. There is a 0% chance of it working this year.

You are too optimistic. How about this:

5% chance of happening in December 2030. 0% chance by 2025.

Not everyone should try to be a Comedian..

I can see them relaxing rules and „living with covid“ over the next months, albeit they won’t call it that way.

CDC has been a failure the whole time. It never made sense in the first place to require testing on int'l flights but allow people to take domestic flights without having to test at all. Either get rid of the requirement or apply it to all flights. But now they have a further contradiction in that they suspended the requirements from an area experiencing a big surge, but still have them in place for people coming from areas without surges.

If testing people determined whether they have the virus or not with 100% certainty, then all we'd have to do is test everyone simultaneously once and we'd be able to completely stop it.

I believe the US CDC should just get rid of the requirement. Instead of saying this is a 'humanitarian gesture' just realize the stupidity of it.
Like how customer service agents will say 'this is a one time exception' instead of the company changing its stupid policies.

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And does the CDC require a negative COVID test for Ukraine refugees? I would hope not. But I do hear about refugees being prevented from entering for ... (no idea).
Unfortunately this lack of human sympathy seems to pervade the US government. Using an analogy from China, would one prevent an elderly person who is seriously ill from getting into the hospital because there is no negativr covid test yet?

If the policy is that people need a negative test to enter the US (to protect people against SARS-CoV-2 variants), then the proper humanitarian gesture is to allow refugees in (whether from Ukraine or Shanghai), then test them on entry and segregate them from the general population until the test results come back. The virus doesn't discriminate in who it infects and if there needs to be a policy of testing everyone, then exceptions should not be made for refugees, except to let them in, test them on entry, and not bill them for being tested or quarantined. If on the other hand the humanitarian gesture is to allow refugees to not be tested and just walk into the general population, then that is an indication that no one needs to be tested at all, and the CDC should drop the requirement entirely.

Hopefully the geniuses at the top do it soon. I’m running low on food now.

I have a question , does the Shanghai lockdown extend to the places that abut the metropolitan area? If so , how far ? I've been trying to get in touch with an acquaintance and haven't been able to reach them. TIA.

The Shanghai lockdown itself ends at the border, but many other cities (including ones that abut Shanghai) have varying degrees of lockdown.

But, even if locked down (or even put in central quarantine), people should have access to the phone, etc.